In ‘The Bronze,’ an Ex-Olympian Is Utterly Unbalanced

Shiny leotards, corny music, bouncy pigtails and scary determination. When you think of a female gymnast, all those associations might come to mind. What doesn’t is a foul-mouthed, sex-crazed, allergy-medication-snorting adult woman with ample cleavage.

But that’s Hope Annabelle Greggory, a former Olympic gymnast and the central character in the dark comedy “The Bronze,” due on Friday, March 18.

Hope, created and played by Melissa Rauch, probably best known for the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” is a bronze medalist who sustained a career-ending injury when she was 15. And she is struggling to move past her disappointment at home in Ohio. She steals money from the mail truck of her father, a mail carrier; gets high with a sneaker salesman at the mall; and lives off freebies from her adoring town.

The movie is both a sendup of sports films and a subversive comedy that lampoons the world of gymnastics while wrestling with the complexities of fame, especially when it comes young.

Written by Ms. Rauch and her husband, Winston Rauch, directed by Bryan Buckley and produced under the umbrella of Mark and Jay Duplass, the film had its premiere in one of the coveted opening-night spots at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. It gained attention right away for its sharp, twisted humor and a gymnastics-inspired sex scene in which every possible move is employed to shocking and hilarious effect — bars and rings included.

Even so, like many indie movies, its path to the screen hasn’t been easy. Relativity Media picked it up with much fanfare at Sundance for $3 million and scheduled the release for that July. But that month, Relativity filed for bankruptcy, and “The Bronze” got caught up in the company’s problems. In September, Sony Pictures Classics agreed to distribute the film to about 1,100 screens.

Even before the post-Sundance detour, Ms. Rauch had to fight for the film, her first feature. “This was my ‘Rocky,’” she said in a recent phone conversation. “Other producers said they wanted someone with more box-office experience to play it, but I held on, and I’m so glad I did.”

The idea came to her when she returned to her hometown, Marlboro, N.J., after gaining some early attention on TV. At the mall, she was given a free pretzel after being recognized, a scene repeated in the movie. “It made me think: ‘What does fame do to people? How does it change them?’”

Gymnastics provided a natural setting. “I’m 4-11,” she said, “I wasn’t going to play a WNBA star.” Ms. Rauch prepared by watching meets at U.C.L.A. and studying with a Romanian coach. “She was so confused,” Ms. Rauch said. “But I got the landing poses.”

The film, which also stars Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan and Haley Lu Richardson, took 22 days to shoot and was partly re-edited after some poor reviews at Sundance. There were also improvised scenes.

“We write everything together,” Mr. Rauch said, describing the couple’s process. They met freshman year at Marymount Manhattan College and have been together 14 years. The first show they wrote for Melissa was “The Miss Education of Jenna Bush,” part of the New York International Fringe Festival in 2005.

Ms. Rauch’s interest in women who behave badly has continued since she first played Jenna, and “The Bronze” tests the boundaries of what it means to play a female antihero. She said she and her husband were inspired by movies like “All About Eve” and characters like Bette Davis’s Mildred in “Of Human Bondage.”

“She’s salty and promiscuous, and I wish there were more female characters like that,” she said. “There just aren’t enough roles out there that allow women to be anything but nice. It’s like if you only let yourself eat a burger once in a while, that burger has to be perfect, but it’s not going to be complex.”

For the director, Mr. Buckley, the dark side of Hope’s character was part of the movie’s appeal. “As a filmmaker,” he said, “the idea of taking someone who you really detest basically, and then peeling away those layers and really falling in love with that character, it’s a great challenge.”

He added that in some ways Hope is very familiar. “We all have horrible friends that we’re still friends with,” he said. But as long as they “have a good side, you’re willing to accept that. And you figure most of America has a friend like that, too.”

But getting audiences to go see a movie that isn’t formulaic has become harder. “You can’t ignore the marketplace and the realities of the business now,” Mr. Buckley said, singling out younger audiences as a concern for indie filmmakers. Young moviegoers are “only going to see tent-pole pictures, and they’re born and raised on Marvel,” he said. “Movies like ‘The Bronze’ could open the possibility of film up to them and show them that movies can be a little different, and irreverent in their own way.”

The film’s marketing reflects those realities. Ms. Rauch is doing video vignettes, and there’s also marketing on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.

“This is what small films have to do now,” said Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, explaining that traditional advertising, like commercials, won’t work. “We can’t start buying TV three weeks in and spend $50 million. But we have to reach as many eyeballs, and the Internet is incredibly economical.”

Despite the challenges, the couple are thrilled that their film is finally arriving in theaters.

“I’m so proud of my wife,” Mr. Rauch said. “I witnessed every scene, and yet she’s not recognizable at all to me. In reality, she’s the sweetest person on earth.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page AR16 of the New York edition with the headline: An Ex-Olympian, Utterly Unbalanced. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe